The film "8: The Mormon Proposition" premiered at Sundance yesterday, showing how the LDS church funded Prop 8 and took away the right to marry in California. The Utah church also spent $1 million to ban same sex marriage in Alaska, and pushed similar bans in other states.
8:TMP follows the stories of many LGBT citizens seeking marriage equality and never-before revealed Mormon efforts to stop them... [Fred] Karger, a gay Californian, was given secret memos and documents from inside the Mormon Church as he investigated the tens of millions of dollars funneled into California to fight gay marriage. The memos reveal for the first time that Mormons used front groups to achieve their goals against LGBT legislation, with a battle plan beginning in Hawaii.
The Mormons bankrolled a gay marriage ban in Hawaii in 1998, the same year they funded the Alaska marriage ban. (On Friday, the Hawaii senate passed a civil unions bill by a veto-proof majority, and the house is expected to pass it as well.)
The current Prop 8 trial in San Fransicso exposed more documents proving the Mormon role in pushing the ban, including church leaders working for the political campaign, sending fundraising letters to members, and calling for door to door teams to advocate for Prop 8.
The open promotion of anti-gay political issues by the LDS and other churches has focused attention on the tax exempt status of religious organizations. A Canadian church that was heavily involved in anti-gay political measures had its tax exempt status revoked last week.
Watch the trailer for "8"
3 comments:
I thought the LDS spent $1 million in Alaska.
Check out Margaret Talbot's jan. 18 New Yorker piece about the California lawsuit. She shows who the attorneys are, asks if its "too soon" for a federal case, and explains some relatively complicated legal stuff—most of which points toward this country eventually accepting gay marriage as a right.
Regards,
sc
Oops, thanks for the correction.
The LDS wrote a single check for $400,000. in the summer of 1998 to the Alaskan Family Council for their campaign for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage here.
The local Knights of Columbus was their next largest contributor, with $10,000.
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